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Oh dear… new SimCity patch makes everything worse

It's one thing to release a game that's single player experience requires always-online DRM and then have those same always-on servers crash soon after launch, but it's another thing entirely to release game breaking patches that were supposed to fix everything weeks after launch. That's the situation EA, Maxis and unfortunate gamers now find themselves in and it's not pretty.

SimyCity 2.0 was released yesterday and it was designed to fix a myriad of issues with the base game. While people were annoyed those bugs were there in the first place, the industry as a whole is accepting that sometimes these problems just slip through the cracks. However, the sheer scale of the issues created by the patch that was supposed to fix these, is staggering.

sewage
SimCity players are reporting masses of sewage. Though whether they mean in-game or the game itself is unknown.

A giant Reddit thread has been keeping track of the issues and it's growing every hour. So far some of the most ridiculous include:

  • Only one map shows up on the “Join Game” list
  • Road texture and leaderboard issues not fixed
  • Phantom sounds from objects, including trees blaring sirens
  • Sewage overload
  • Buildings get stuck in construction
  • Transit isn't fixed – this was one of the big things the patch was supposed to rectified.
  • Saves rolling back to previous versions without prompt
  • Lots of random crashes.

And many, many more. Not all of these bugs are experienced by everyone, but it's a lot of problems created by a patch that was supposed to fix much of the player gripes with the game.

It's so ridiculous at this point, that one player even suggested this might be EA/Maxis' way of creating a performance art piece with some sort of philosophical message. If that was actually the case, it would be great… but it's not.

KitGuru Says: EA needs to be careful here, or it'll be looking at more than online complaints, but potential mass refunds and even a class action suit for miss-selling a product that doesn't work. 

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One comment

  1. if EA spent as much time fixing the game as they did creating the DRM, They would have had a good game, I find it funny how after launch the old sim city was climbing the ranks on steam.